• SPEECH 


OF 

HON. CHARLES DENISON, 

OF PENNSYLVANIA, 


ON 


AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION; 


DELIVERED 


IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 31, 1866. 


WASHINGTON*. 

PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 

1866. 


JK 

97 


t 



AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION. 


The House being in the Committee of the Whole 
on the state of the Union — 

Mr. DENISON said: 

Mr. Chairman: I voted a few days since 
against a proposition to amend the Consti- 
tution of the United States in such manner 
as to prevent any State from levying taxes 
to pay debts contracted in carrying on the re- 
bellion; and as my vote was different from that 
of all the Democrats of my own State, and most 
of the Democrats of the House, I have desired 
this opportunity to explain, not the vote, but 
the reasons for the vote, as a mark of respect 
for the opinions of my colleagues and the three 
hundred and fifty thousand Democratic voters 
in my own State, whose interests and opinions 
we are presumed, in some manner, to repre- 
sent ; and as I intend to give the same vote upon 
some twenty-five or thirty similar propositions 
now pending before Congress, I shall explain 
my views of the power to amend the Federal 
Constitution more fully on that account. And 
yet I am not unmindful of the fact that one who 
proposes at this day to discuss the power to 
amend the Constitution must appear like one 
repeating a tale twice told. And I further 
state that I do not speak for any side of this 
House, nor any party of men, not even for my 
own district, unless my constituents choose to 
adopt what I say ; so that no one is accountable 
for such views as I may utter excepting myself. 

The proposition against which I voted was 
introduced in this House, and under the pres- 
sure of the previous question passed without 
debate, without consideration, and with very 
extraordinary and indecent haste* considering 
the great power which it proposes to transfer 
from the States to the Federal Government and 
the Federal courts. Under this amendment the 
Federal Government would have the power and 
the right to inquire into the constitutionality of 
a tax levied to repair a township bridge ; to 
stand between the State and its tax-payer, and 


superintend the collecting and disbursing of all 
taxes in a State lest the debts paid may have 
been contracted in carrying on the rebellion ; 
for a tax levied and collected for a lawful pur- 
pose plight be diverted after it had reached the 
treasury and it would then be a most interest- 
ing employment for the Supreme Court to com- 
pel the State to refund to the citizens the taxes 
improperly collected or improperly paid out. 

The only good which I can see in this very 
great change in the organic law of this nation, 
is that the Supreme Court would not be idle 
for the want of business, and its judges would 
not have time to travel about the country mak- 
ing speeches to the negroes, and in that way 
electioneering for the office of President. The 
provision will be found to be impracticable and 
worthless. 

Nor would I desire that the Federal Govern- 
ment or any State government should assume 
to pay, or levy taxes upon the citizen to pay, 
debts contracted in carrying on the rebellion. 
God knows we have debts enough of our own to 
pay. Nor do I know of but one class of men 
who intend that the Federal Government shall 
assume and pay the debts of the confederate or 
rebel States, and that embraces the extreme 
abolitionists, or that class of men who claim 
that such States were alien enemies, and are 
now conquered provinces, for they well know 
that, as such, the conqueror takesdhe provinces 
with their burdens upon them ; that if they are 
successful in thus holding, they must, according , 
to the law of nations, pay their debts. And they 
must further know, that in pursuance of this 
well-settled principle of international law, Great 
Britain is even now gathering up her accounts 
to make a demand upon our Government for 
the payment of the debts of the confederacy, 
and if the theory of the Radicals be true, she 
will make you pay them. But I am not willing 
to pay their debts, nor in favor of so treating 
them as to make the Federal Government in 
any manner liable for them. Nor is it neces- 


4 


sary to alter the Constitution to meet this end, 
a remedy already being provided in the Su- 
preme Court for the express purpose, and 
which would most assuredly decide against the 
payment of any such debt. 

But, sir, I have other reasons for my vote, 
and to my mind higher considerations than can 
arise from taxes or debts in any form. It will 
be observed that the proposed amendment is 
to give the Federal Government the power and 
the right to dictate to sovereign States the debts 
which they shall not pay. This is a very extraor- 
dinary power to place in the Federal Constitu- 
tion, to compel States to repudiate debts, a course 
which States, like individuals, are sufficiently 
prone to follow without the excuse which you 
propose to furnish. And this may be the wrong 
time to set the example of repudiation, until we 
see our own vast debt provided for. More than 
two thirds of this House appear to have no doubt 
of the policy or the power to make so great a 
change in the ’organic law of this nation. I 
deny the policy, and very much doubt the power, 
even though you hang upon your proposal the 
odious words 1 1 rebel debt. ’ ’ By looking at our 
files it will be seen that you have one proposi- 
tion to grant the right of suffrage to certain 
negro soldiers who served in the war, another 
to grant certain lands in pursuance of some 
military order of one General Hunter, another 
that no State shall make any distinction in the 
civil rights of persons residing therein on ac- 
count of color or descent, and another provid- 
ing for colored persons sitting as jurors., and I 
believe some twenty or thirty others. 

There is one peculiarity which runs through 
all of these proposed amendments, and that is, 
to add to the powers delegated to the Federal 
Government, and to that extent take from the 
reserved rights of the States. 

These propositions have come upon us with 
such rapidity and profusion as to indicate that 
Congress had no other business to require its 
attention ; and that the people had become so 
weary of “ the best Government ever devised 
by the wisdom of man” that they had selected 
and sent here the most ultra men in the land to 
destroy it by usurpations of power under the 
guise of constitutional amendments. 

In my judgment, it is a matter of grave re- 
sponsibility to make vital changes in the organic 
law of a nation, and should not be done except 
upon the most urgent necessity , and upon points 
wherein we have the undoubted right, and at a 
time when the public mind is in condition for se- 
rious deliberation. Surely not when one third 
of the States are unrepresented in Congress. 

It becomes us, as we regard the oath which 
we have taken, to look well at the charter under 
which we claim these powers, to see if we have 
the right to make these changes lest we place 
acts upon the record of this nation which are 
evidence of our presumption, as well as our 
imbeciUtv, wickedness, and folly. 


In order to understand what powers are placed 
under the control of two thirds of Congress and 
three fourths of the States, it is important to look 
at the condition of the States and the people 
before the adoption of the Constitution of 1789, 
as well as the Constitution itself. 

In looking at that period in our history as a 
people, the first important paper that we find 
is the Declaration of Independence, standing 
comparatively alone, and marking the birth of 
a great nation. In that instrument we find 
three distinct propositions. The first is, “that 
all men are created equal;” but they did not 
state that as the reason for their independence, 
or they would have enunciated the fact, and 
claimed by virtue thereof the right to be free; 
nor did they regard this abstract proposition 
as the basis of government, excepting so far as 
it applied to themselves and the white people 
whom they represented, for they then had two 
distinct races of men in their midst who were not 
then, nor have they since, been permitted to 
realize the great truth 1 1 that all men are created 
equal.” Neither the Indian nor the negro have 
been permitted to participate in the affairs of 
this Government up to this hour. The negro 
was enslaved and the Indian has been moved 
from land to land, and we appear to have kept 
him as an excuse for squandering millions of 
money, which we generally place in the hands 
of a well- organized band of thieves, who stand 
between the Treasury Department and the In- 
dian ; and that is a most fortunate tribe which 
receives one tenth of the money appropriated. 
And yet we continually hear repeated ‘ 1 All men 
are created equal.” 

The country is now filled with latter-day saints, 
who claim that it has especial reference to the 
negro, and are willing to sacrifice their own Gov- 
ernment and the liberties of their own children 
to make it true. And yet it would be fair to 
presume that the great men who made our sys- 
tem of government understood the great truths 
which they uttered and the provisions of the 
Constitution which they had established, and 
were able to apply them to the ruling of the 
people. 

The second proposition in that instrument is 
that all just Governments are founded upon the 
consent of the governed ; and based upon this 
second proposition, the colonies no longer con- 
senting to be governed by Great Britain because 
certain of their chartered rights as Englishmen 
had been violated and disregarded, the authors 
of the Declaration proclaim their third propo- 
sition, “that these colonies are, and of right 
ought to be, free and independent States.” 
And to maintain this conclusion they enter into 
Articles of Confederation, put their men and 
means in a common fund, fight the battles of 
the Revolution, obtain their independence, and 
repudiate their debts. 

The Confederation was merely an agreement 
between sovereign Powers, and provided, in so 


5 


many words, that each State should maintain 
its sovereignty in all respects wherein the power 
had not been delegated to the Confederation. 
The independence thus acquired left each State 
not only free and independent of Great Britain, 
but of each other, and, as such, they had a right to 
declare war, make peace, contract alliances with 
any other or foreign Power and do any and all 
things which sovereign Powers may do. And 
it was the representatives of these Powers that 
made the Constitution, and they stated in the 
beginning of their labors the objects at which 
they aimed. They represented sovereign Pow- 
ers, and they intended to relinquish enough of 
the powers they represented to accomplish the 
objects of the FederalUnion, and no more. They 
left us a very peculiar system of government, and 
if sovereignty means that power over which 
there is no superior, whose decrees when made 
are final, then our whole system of government 
is made up of local sovereignties ? each absolute 
within its own local jurisdiction, and acting as 
so many checks against the flowing of power, 
into a centralized despotism. 

When the people of a township, a county, or 
State, have determined by ballot the choice of 
officers to execute the laws of each municipal 
corporation, they have exercised one of the at- 
tributes of sovereignty. 

The States furnish the courts to protect the 
citizen in his rights of person and of property, 
the descent of estates, and regulate all of the 
•domestic relations of the citizen under the Gov- 
ernment. Each State is as entirely independent 
of every other State as if it were a foreign Power, 
and just as independent of the Federal Govern- 
ment within the reserved powers and in all re- 
spects wherein the powers have not been dele- 
gated in the Constitution. And the Federal 
Government is as Completely a consolidated 
Government and as perfect a Union, within the 
delegated powers, as it would be if there were 
no State governments in existence ; and each is 
as completely master of their respective powers 
as they would be if the other did not exist. 

It is to the Constitution alone that we must 
look to ascertain what powers were delegated 
and what reserved, and the condition of the 
reserved rights, whether reserved absolutely 
to the States, or whether the reserved rights 
were to be taken away by the will of any other 
power than the people of the State for whose 
benefit the reservation was made. 

Any person may invest a portion of his estate 
in the stock of a bank, andthus place that much 
of his earnings under the control of the majority 
of the stockholders or directors of such bank, 
but they do not thereby get any right to control 
that portion of his estate which he retains ; that 
part of his property still belongs to him, and is 
under his control as much as if he had no in- 
terest in the bank, and he cannot be made to 
part with it except with his own free will. So 
it was competent for the States when they cre- 


ated this governmental organization called the 
United States, by the Constitution, to delegate 
therein certain powers and the right to do cer- 
tain things, andthus place the powers delegated 
under the control of the Federal majorities, and 
reserve certain other powers to be controlled by 
the people of each State, and for the exercise 
and control of which they were not to be answer- 
able to any other power. 

If the States did thus absolutely and uncon- 
ditionally reserve these powers, then they can- 
not be taken away by two thirds of this House 
and three fourths of the States any more than 
the majority of the stockholders of a bank, in 
which I might have stock, could take my horse 
or my farm for the use of the corporation, be- 
cause the States never placed these reserved 
powers in the common fund of powers to be 
controlled by Federal majorities. Their con- 
dition was the same as to these reserved- powers 
after the adoption of the Constitution as before. 
The people of each State constituted a sov- 
ereignty before the adoption of that instru- 
ment. They were equally sovereign over the 
reserved rights after its adoption, and they can- 
not be taken away, except by the will of each 
State, unless there be something in the Consti- 
tution to authorize it ; for a State, like an indi- 
vidual, cannot be bound further than it agrees to 
bind itself. Have the States parted with their 
absolute control over these reserved rights by 
agreeing to the power to amend the Federal 
Constitution? If so, then these powers were 
not reserved absolutely, but only retained until 
the Federal majorities as represented by two 
thirds of Congress and three fourths of the 
States may choose to transfer them, against the 
will of the people of a State, or it may be one 
fourth of the States, from the respective States 
to the Federal Government. This point ought 
to be settled by the Constitution, and I think 
it is. We find therein two provisions bearing 
directly upon the power of amendment. The 
first is the fifth article, and is in these words: 

“ The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses 
shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to 
this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legis- 
latures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a 
convention for proposing amendments, which in either 
case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part 
of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures 
of three fourths of the several States, or by conven- 
tions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other 
mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress : 
Provided, That no amendment which may be made 
prior to the year 1808 shall in any manner affect the 
first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first 
article: and that no State, without its consent, shall 
be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” 

And the other is the tenth amendment, and 
in the following words : 

‘‘The powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, 
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the peo- 
ple.” 

The tenth amendment fixes the type of lim- 
itation upon the organic law , and makes the 


6 


Federal Government one of delegated and not 
original powers. We are not. therefore, to 
take any power by inference. The power to 
be exercised must be clearly expressed in the 
Constitution, or we cannot take it. We have 
in the fifth article of the Constitution the right 
to amend, for such is the word used, but not to 
make anew. It would not be an amendment 
to abolish this Constitution and adopt the old 
Articles of Confederation, or the unwritten con- 
stitution of England, or the laws and customs 
of France or Russia. 

An amendment must, therefore, be of some- 
thing germane to the instrument ; it must be of 
something which we already have in the Consti- 
tution or it is not an amendment, but the making 
of a new Constitution, and would only be binding 
upon such States as agree to be bound by it, 
and could not become a part of the Constitution 
until every State should adopt the same. If one 
State should refuse its consent, it would not, 
by virtue of our Constitution, be binding upon 
any, because while that instrument provided that 
when it should be ratified by nine States it 
should be binding upon the nine, it made no 
provision either for making a new Constitution, 
nor for its own destruction. 

This view would limit the amendatory power 
of the Constitution to the scope of the delegated 
powers from the States to the Federal Govern- 
ment, and prohibit the taking of any powers not 
delegated ; and that the men who made the Con- 
stitution so understood it is shown by the instru- 
ment itself. The first exception to the to a 
ower of amendment, in the fifth article, refers 
elegated power — the right to control foreign 
commerce. The second exception to the exer- 
cise of the power refers to the manner of vot- 
ing by States or a method of doing business 
under the Constitution, and not a delegated 
power. As germane to the general power to 
regulate foreign commerce, ah amendment 
could have been made prohibiting the slave 
trade before 1808, and for this reason a partic- 
ular limitation upon the amendatory power of 
the Constitution was necessary to guard it. 
As an incident to the legislative power vested 
in a Congress of the United States in providing 
methods to do business under the Constitution, 
it would be competent to change the Constitu- 
tion by amendment in such manner as to deprive 
a State of its equal vote in the Senate, and to 
prevent this the second particular limitation is 
found in the proviso. 

From this it appears that the framers of the 
Constitution regarded the amendatory power 
as applicable to its delegated powers or grants 
and its methods of doing business, and for that 
reason made these exceptions to the exercise 
of the power. These exceptions furnish the 
rule for the exercise of the power of amend- 
ment. Under this rule you may so modify the 
Constitution by amendment in its delegated 
powers and methods of doing business as to 


give it upon its own principles a more complete 
effect. 

This construction would give sufficient scope 
and influence to the power of amendment in 
the fifth article. It can act upon any and all 
of the delegated powers. Two thirds of Con- 
gress and three fourths of the States may so 
change the Constitution as to make the justices 
of the Supreme Court elective. They might 
make the office of President to continue for ten 
or twenty years. Under the power to coin money 
and regulate the value thereof, you might so 
amend the Constitution as to get power to make 
a 1 1 greenback’ ’ a legal tender for the payment 
of debts; and so on through all of the dele- 
gated powers. But it is claimed as a fair rule of 
construction, that denying the power to amend 
in two particulars admits the power in all other 
respects ; and this is the correct rule, and the 
men who made the Constitution so understood 
it, and to avoid the operation of this rule, and 
that there should be no implied or constructive 
powers in the Constitution, they adopted the 
tenth amendment, declaratory of its meaning, 
namely, that “the powers not delegated to the 
United States are reserved to the States re- 
spectively or the people. ’ ’ 

The tenth amendment was in lieu of the arti- 
cle in the Confederation providing for the sov- 
ereignty of the States, and was placed there for 
the express purpose of keeping the reserved 
rights of the States from the control of the Fed- 
eral majorities. And this restriction upon the 
authority or scope of the Constitution includes 
its amendatory power, as well as all other pow- 
ers and grants it contains. 

Unless the scope of amendment is limited, it 
is difficult to see the use of the exceptions in 
the proviso, or in what manner the restriction 
attaches to the power of amendment in the fifth 
article. The amendatory power of the fifth 
article in the Constitution is as much within the 
general restriction of the tenth amendment at- 
taching to all the other delegated powers con- 
tained in the organic law as it is within the two 
special limitations contained in the proviso ; 
otherwise the power of amendment could be 
resorted to in defiance of the two special limit- 
ations, and they could be taken from the Con- 
stitution by amendment. To assume this con- 
clusion would not do justice to the patriotism 
or wisdom of the great men who made and 
adopted the Constitution for the welfare of this 
people. 

This construction affords abuhdant room and 
scope for the amendatory power of the fifth 
article to act upon and modify any and all of 
the delegated powers, and gives a clear and 
distinct office to be filled by the tenth amend- 
ment. Each provision is consistent with the 
other, and the Constitution consistent with 
itself. For a period of more than seventy years 
no other use was ever attempted to be made 
of this power of amendment. The first ten 


7 


amendments to the Constitution were only- 
declaratory of its meaning and in limitation 
of its power, and stand as a bill of rights for 
the citizen or a perpetual protest against any 
encroachment upon the reserved rights of the 
States or the people of the States. 

The eleventh amendment was proposed in 
1794, and is a limitation upon the judicial power 
of the United States. The twelfth amendment, 
in 1803, was a change in the mode of electing 
the Vice President, preserving the system of 
Electors as provided in the Constitution. It 
would .be competent for two thirds of Congress 
and three fourths of the States to abolish the 
Electors and provide for a direct vote of the 
people for the office of President and Vice Pres- 
ident by amendment ; for it would be within the 
amendatory power or the fifth article, as it only 
relates to the delegated powers or a method 
of proceeding as provided in the Constitution. 
No attempt has ever been made to make a dif- 
ferent use of this power of amendment until this 
war uprooted and overturned the foundations of 
all law, and substituted the wicked passions of 
angry mon in their stead. 

If the opposite view of this power be correct, 
then there is no limit to the power of amend- 
ment excepting the discretion of two thirds of 
Congress and three fourths of the States, and it 
renders the tenth amendment of the Constitu- 
tion without force or meaning. This provision 
speaks ofdelegated powers. What are delegated 
owers ? I employ an agent to buy me a farm ; 
e acts under delegated power. The original 
ower is with me, and he must act according to 
is power or he acts without authority. This pro- 
vision also speaks of reserved rights. What ! 
a reserved right taken away without the consent 
of the party for whose benefit the reservation was 
made ! Was ever such a right called a reserved 
right? A person may sell his farm and reserve 
the minerals under the same with the power to 
remove them, or he may sell the minerals and 
reserve the farm. Upon this simple principle, 
which no one ever doubted, depends the title to 
millions of property in my county alone. What 
would the owners of those rich coal mines think 
of reserved rights if told that they could be taken 
from them without their consent ? And yet you 
ignore their title by the construction which you 
adopt to take reserved powers from the States 
to the Federal Government. Y our construction 
would enable you so to amend the Constitution 
as to strike from the fifth article the words two 
thirds and three fourths, and substitute the word 
majority; making our Constitution a mere ba- 
rometer to measure the ups and downs of party, 
and worthless. The same power which will 
enable you to control the gathering of taxes in 
a State would enable you to remove from the 
Constitution the injunction that you shall guar- 
anty to each State a republican form of gov- 
ernment, and then abolish the Legislature and 
the local or State courts, and then the State 


itself. Then the American Congress becomes 
what the British Parliament always has been, 
omnipotent, and the Constitution becomes an 
instrument of original and no longer dele- 
gated powers. Some of the majority in this 
House appear to talk as if there were rights re- 
served to the States, but they do not state what 
they are nor where the rights of the States cease 
and those of the Federal Government begin. 
Let them make the point where the Constitution 
has. Those not delegated are reserved. It 
cannot be that a solemn provision of the Con- 
stitution, like the tenth amendment, was placed 
there for no purpose. 

No ?> sir, it was by this that the framers of the 
Constitution intended to seal up the reserved 
rights of the States, as a miser does his wealth, 
beyond the reach of profane hands. It lifts 
the Constitution above the filth of party poli- 
tics and beyond the reach of party malice, and 
makes it truly national ; for nothing less than 
the whole nation can change it in its powers. 
Like the heavens, which are over all, and send 
upon all the bright sunshine and showers, and 
1 1 with the early and later rains ’ ’ fill the earth 
with rich bounties and blessings for all, and 
yet is beyond the reach of all, so does this 
place the* Constitution around and over all, 
protecting all, and furnishing prosperity and 
happiness and liberty for all, and yet is beyond 
the reach of any less than all. These amend- 
ments speak of the rights of trial, the qualifica- 
tions of jurors, the right of suffrage. If these 
rights are not sacred, and sacredly reserved to 
the States, then we have none that are. These 
are the richest jewels of this people, any one of 
which is of more value than all the gems that 
were ever dug from the mountains and all the 
pearls the ocean ever concealed. And yet you 
propose to take this rich and priceless inher- 
itance, which descended from our fathers, and 
bestow it upon another and a foreign race ! 

Such being my view of the powers delegated 
to the Federal Government and the rights re- 
served to the States, I cannot vote for any 
amendment of the Constitution, excepting such 
as relate to the delegated powers or the methods 
of doing business, giving it a more complete 
effect upon its own principles. The proposi- 
tions before us are not amendments, but new 
and additional powers, and if adopted, would 
be usurpations and invasions upon the reserved 
rights of the States or the people. I cannot vote 
for any amendment which will confer any new or 
additional power to those already delegated in 
the Constitution. I am fully satisfied that suffi- 
cient power was delegated in that instrument, to 
say nothing of the enlarged powers by construc- 
tion, and the still greater by congressional, exe^ 
utive, and military usurpations. But, as itis, this 
war never could have taken place if the rights of 
each State had been respected by Congress and 
the people of every other State. We have heard 
very much of “the first gun” in this rebellion. 


8 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



0 020 689 998 


That firs* gun was not fired by the rebels at Fort 
Sumter, nor by old John Brown in Virginia, but 
it was fired by the American Congress when 
that body passed the Missouri compromise and 
usurped the right to legislate upon the subject 
of slavery, a mere domestic institution, resting 
with the people of each State, as other domes- 
tic institutions now do ; and that usurpation hav- 
ing been acquiesced in by the people North and 
South, led to the belief that at least one of the 
reserved rights, one of the domestic institu- 
tions, was liable to be influenced and controlled 
by Federal majorities. And the people of New 
England have been firing guns ever since ; and 
after forty years of insult and outrage they had a 
return shot, ending in war ; and after four years 
of most bloody conflict, not instituted but per- 
verted for that purpose, slavery has been abol- 
ished. And I say, peace to its ashes ! I would 
not disturb the slumbers of the dead if I had 
the power, and I hope that every State which 
ever was in this Union will ratify the amend- 
ment of the Constitution, that there be no more 
slavery in this land, and we shall then have at 
least one question settled forever. 

If this war had been carried on for the purpose 
of compelling the States N orth and W est to adopt 
slavery against the will of the people of such 
States, then you could appreciate the view which 
I now take, and you would point to the provision 
of the Constitution to which I have called your 
attention, and claimed that the organic law pro- 
tected your domestic institutions and justified 
you in changing or abolishing them, asthepeo 
pie of each State might choose, and all men 
would have said that you were right. 

A leading and highly respectable journal in 
the city of Philadelphia declares that by casting 
the vote to which I have alluded I have ren- 
dered myself infamous, and that I do not rep- 
resent the true sentiment of my district. When 
I think I do not represent the views of my con- 
stituents I will resign and go home ; but all the 
men in my district or my State could not get 
me to vote for any of these usurpations of power, 
even though they are called amendments. I mhst 
be permitted to keep my oath and support the 
Constitution as I understand it. 

And it is to be expected that I should be mis- 
understood, misrepresented, and abused ; such 
has been the sure fate of men with firmness 
enough to stand in the face of popular preju- 
dice and uphold what they believe to be right. 
St. Paul dared to be a Christian, and for this he 
was twice beaten with rods, once stoned, and 
made to fight with wild beasts at Ephesus. 


And before and ever since the ignorant and the 
prejudiced have been ready to sing peans and 
songs of praise to the party in power, however 
corruptandwicked,andshout“GreatisDianaof 
the Ephesians, ” “ Release unto us, Barabbas ! ’ ’ 
and they can now add, “for he is one of us.” But 
so long as I am in this House you shall have 
one vote for the old Constitution, and with God’s 
help, one vote against all of your efforts to usurp 
new powers for the Federal Government ; and 
that embraces all of your proposed amendments. 
I have no desire to change the Constitution which 
the fathers gave us, the Bible which they read, 
nor the God which they worshiped. But I do 
not expect this House to listen to me or heed 
what I say. “If they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, neither willchey be persuaded though 
one rose from the dead.” If you believe not 
the Constitution and the laws, neither would 
you be persuaded if God should send Wash- 
ington and Jefferson and Jackson and Web- 
ster and Clay and all the dead patriots and 
heroes of our land to testify against you. 
You would call them old slaveholders or cop- 
perheads, and bid them go where they had 
business. 

Your purposes are clearly indicated in your 
proposed amendments. The followers of the 
veiled prophet are about to see his features ; the 
veil is being removed. But where is the cal- 
dron of heated oil? The people must prepare 
it. You are about to destroy the Constitution 
of our fathers. The 1 1 league with death and cov- 
enant with hell” must be removed and the Chi- 
cago platform of 1860 substituted in its place. 
Nor does it matter that it was a sectional, abo- 
lition platform ; we must have a sectional, abo- 
lition Constitution. But is there no other sac- 
rifice which can be taken in its stead? When 
Abraham was about to sacrifice his only son, 
Isaac, as he believed, by the command of God, 
and when he had built the altar and prepared 
the wood, another sacrifice was provided. I 
know that you have the altar and the wood 
ready to sacrifice our Constitution, and I ask 
you to call upon the deities which you worship 
and see if some substitute cannot be found ; call 
upon the negro or the Republican party, and it 
may be that something less dear to the Ameri- 
can people than their Government might answer. 
But if not, when you see the smoke ascending 
from the altar and the sacrifice, remember that 
it takes with it the liberties of your country and 
the liberties of your children, and that your 
children’s children will condemn you for the 
sacrilege. 


t- 


